Linville: Trump’s Tariffs Will Impact Fertilizer Prices and Availability for Farmers

President Trump signed an Executive Order on Saturday that imposes 25-percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, as well as additional 10-percent tariffs on Chinese imports that are officially set to start on Tuesday, Feb. 4.

Josh Linville, Vice President of Fertilizer with StoneX, says that Trump’s tariffs will have a major impact on fertilizer prices and availability.

“There are a lot of different viewpoints of who actually pays the tariff, and I think a lot of that comes back to pressure and timing and the ability to ship supplies, and frankly, in the fertilizer flow, they come down to the product,” he says.

Linville believes that fertilizer imports from Canada will not only see a significant spike in costs, but Trump’s tariffs may likely cause an interruption in the supply chain.

“When we look at urea, there’s a tremendous amount of urea that flows from the U.S. to Canada in the eastern half of the country,” according to Linville. “In the western half of the countries, Canada sends a lot of urea down to the Pacific Northwest-California region, so there’s a shared flow there.

“You flip over to anhydrous. There’s a lot of anhydrous that comes from Canada down into the U.S. We’re highly reliant on that. A lot of phosphate comes from the U.S. to Canada. They’re depending on us there. And then potash is the biggest one. It’s hard to understate just how important Canadian potash flows are to the U.S.,” he says.

Linville adds that the timing of all this doesn’t help farmers.

“So, when we look at all of these things, I would tell you the thing that has me believing we’re going to pay a little bit more of those tariff rates in the short term is because of the calendar. There’s not a lot of time before we start pre-plant application. If we are now merely days away from March when theoretically we could be in the field, buying and putting on anhydrous, things like that. That simply doesn’t give us enough time to say, ‘Okay, if they’re going to force us to pay the 25 (percent tariff), let’s just go buy from somewhere else around the world’,” he says.

StoneX is projecting that 93.6 million acres of corn will be planted across the U.S. in 2025 with other market analysts projecting as many as 95 to 96 million acres. He says this is also a big boost to all fertilizer demand and is “worrisome from the perspective of the calendar.” With all of these concerns, he says “the market is on edge” when it comes to fertilizer pricing and availability.

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